Kevin M.

[DJ Rayne]

SO this should get things moving here.

Answer me this.

What was it about Mitnick that made him so successful at SE?

Tone? Understanding the Jargon? Background?

I also welcome anyone who would like to take issue with KM being successful at all.

[Linuxman]

After reading Kevin's books I think that it was the way he got the infomation. He will find a target and get to know it, spending time learning the languish of the company. It does not matter if it took him a week or a year, just stay on the target until you got it.

[Kjell]

What was it about Mitnick that made him so successful at Social Engineering?
I think that he was learning a lot in his youth, his father was a salesmen if I remember correctly and in that profession a person will need to learn to read how a person works.
The main thing with Kevin Mitnick that made him so successful (I think) was because he mainly did this for fun, since he begun getting free bus-tickets he understood that he could have fun learning stuff, learning how to get into another system and trick the persons there.

[Isethoriginal]

I think his success was a combination of cleverness, fearlessness and the talent to read the story behind the answers of his "victims". I mean, he found out about the fact that the biggest bug in every sistem was situated between keyboard and chair.

[Marc-Andre Leger]

I'm convinced that what ade him successfull is his intelligence, which is way, way above the norm.

[DJ Rayne]

I think this is a 3 point shot.

You have to get above the mental clutter of self, and see things for what they really are.

[Andrei]

I think the KM books are not from KM but perhaps from US gorvernment. Lot of schemas inside but nothing too interesting. KM made some nice trick, I agree. Nice books for beginners.

Lot of professional SE walking behind us in the shadow and we don't know because they are pretty good. Otherwise everybody SE who try to ask information in any kind of offices, shops, etc. It's similar in big-deals. The real SEs are pick-up information more agressively and much more often what you think.

[Isethoriginal]

It does not really matter if it was him or not, who wrote the books. The "succus" is and stays that people are easily to get manipulated and that people manipulate on very interesting ways. What we do with this information is.. our beer.. somehow. Of couse we can never know every tactics, because one of the main parts for success are ideas and creativity. I don't think they are agressive, because being to agressive frightens the victim.
(But we could exchange them in order to know more of them.)